#hosted by Xylax

[fluffland]

Pack (Part 2)

*Please note: tumblr is having issues so this needs to be broken into two parts. If you are a member of Wolvden, you can view this (unbroken) on the contest thread associated with it.*

The next winter, as our tiny pack huddled together, Koll grew restless. She seemed upset, but could not articulate why. Dulca tried licking her ears, but she would not stay still. She watched the darkened sky and moved away from us.

And soon the sky was filled with odd lights. Not the ribbons of sunflame that were the ghost packs hunting, but moving specks and at times a red burning. The tall stalkers and warm things became scarce, and we wondered what was happening, could not quite understand. But Koll knew, and one morning she was no longer there.

Dulca was frantic, so we sniffed about, and howled for her. Eventually we reached a boggy depression where dead black spruce and paper birch clustered, trunks sinking below snow into dark ice. Here, we found her scent, and were wagging our tails with excitement, when I looked up and growled. Eyes ringed us, watching from the darkness. They were eyes like Koll’s, but larger and getting closer.

The beasts circled, closing gaps until there was nowhere their spindly arms could not reach. Dulca stood still, but I balked, afraid. I have always been the more cautious one, there is much in this world to be afraid of.

The creature before us smashed small trees in its its paws with a sound like the breaking of bones, then opened its mouth and keened.

This was a sound I knew, Koll made it often in frustration. We didn’t respond, and then all was silent, but for clicking of claws on ice.

Dulca moved forward a pace, her right paw out, and she begin to scratch something in the snow. I recognized her work as some of the symbols from before.

The thing looked down, brow crinkling, then back at her. She sat, and then two things happened almost at once. The beast growled, and my hackles rose as I leapt to defend Dulca. But a smaller, darker, blur knocked me aside, standing over us.

It was Koll, and she was screaming. We stood very still as she then started to make mouth-noises to the creature before us. The creature responded. I looked at our pup. This, this was her pack?

These sounds were not those of a wolf, but her body spoke to us still. She paced and growled, licking her muzzle in both submission and defiance. The ring listened, and then broke apart. The one before us turned, and Koll glanced at us to follow. Then, we made a traveling line and slipped through the broken trees under the moon. Smells changed around us, revealing we were no longer standing apart, an understanding of sorts had been reached.

We continued in darkness as the moon sank, toward a growing brightness that was not the dawn, but a half-ring of small silver hills. These smelled like Koll and her pack. Their dens? Beside me Dulca flipped her head to one side as one of the dens leapt into the sky with an acrid smell and flew. But they had no wings? I was further confused.

And now you know the root of my doubts. It wasn’t that we didn’t love Koll, though at one time I’d struggled. It was that she clearly wasn’t a wolf, but now she also wasn’t the creatures before us. We’d condemned her to be neither, I think. Maybe if we’d left her as a pup, her pack would have found her sooner.

The den before us had an open slot in it and all the beasts glanced at us then loped inside, leaving our small family alone in the snow, choice quite clear.

Koll sat down, her eyes wide and ears up, tail fanning the snow. We looked at each other, and then I nudged her gently, Dulca following suit. We would be alone again, my mate and I, but Koll would have her family, and we wanted that for her.

Koll nipped at us.

“Come too,” she asked in her still-poor wolf speech, “pack come too.”

Looking back, our world was so much more narrow then, so it seems obvious that we would not at first understand. We tried to shove her forward with more insistent nose pushes, but she squealed and would not budge.

“She wants us too, Alvi,” Dulca finally admitted.  “We are her pack.”

“Pack,” Koll echoed.

I looked at my mate, she returned my glance. Our pup, recognizing we’d made the choice she wanted, shook herself off. And our pack as one stepped together into the gap, and beyond the bounds of anything our kind had ever known.

[confessionsofalionholic]

No the server has nothing to do with the coders or the way the game is built. Its done through a whole different company. You can find out more by looking up on google; "What is server hosting" What is happening has nothing to do with the lioden owners or staff and has everything to do with a fuck up at the server host company. Xylax explained this on his blog. Also no one called you a retard, a POS and a dumbass but the word Retard was never used.

[winter-mother]

Hey Winter, I struggle with coding custom decors onto Lioden, and just wanted to know how you managed to put your decors out without struggling.

Hey there! Sorry for the late reply, super busy with work!

Custom Decor placement and submission can be really confusing the first couple of times, i completely understand! 

Xylax did this tutorial which pretty much covers all of the bases, but i can give you some extra tips!

Age Specific all of your decors. 

Right now you might be thinking you only want the decor in one place, but it is so much easier if you decide later that you want to move the decor for a different pose you have the ability to do so.

Mutations are uploaded the exact same way as regular lions

If you want a decor for Leopons, Dwarves, Mane Fluffy, whatever, you can do that! The placement boxes do not change. Just specify that the decor is for that specific mutation. Remember to not place anything in the poses options for lions with lineart-changing mutations.  Poses do not work for them, so it’s not a good idea overall.

Always Credit your Artists.

I cannot stress this enough. If you commissioned an Artist for your decor, always remember to credit them appropriately. You can do so by imputing their ID number into “Artist ID” or adding “Decor art is by (Lioden Name), # (ID Number). This is so that other people can find them if they’d like to commission them.

You can add more poses later, you don’t need to do them all right now!

Many people wait until all of the decor is completed before uploading, but this isn’t needed! If you feel like you don’t have the time to finish your decor now but you want to add more poses later, submit what you have and add to it later!

Use Imgur for Image Hosting

It’s very easy to see colorbleeds on the dark background it shows you before you get the .png link, and imgur links don’t expire.

Always check, double check, and triple check your Layering

Layering a decor in the right position is crucial. If you make a mistake and forget this step, you can always pm Xylax #4 and ask him to please fix it. It might take him a bit though, so quadruple check if need be! He’s very busy.

Don’t get Anxious,

There’s a lot of boxes to remember, but these are the only ones you need for “basic” decors! 

If you need help, don’t be afraid to ask!

The Game Help forums are a place full of wonderful people who are willing to help, and my inbox on Lioden is always open if you want to ask me!

I hope this helped!

[liodensim]

99 Little Bugs in the Code...

Epic Bug Fixing Day

Today is a day admins picked as the day of Bug Cleansing. The work behind the scenes was taking many days or even weeks, but it was designed to be part of today's update. The following bugs were fixed: * Chasing lionesses into Explore resulted in their markings being completely wiped * Cubs born with 60% or lower marking opacity * Cubs born with 0% opacity markings * Using Ochre Gnawrocks on lionesses did not pass down selected marking * Battle portraits did not display markings in slots 11-20 * Custom lionesses were created with less than 10 marking slots * Users were not gaining SB in Explore despite being nowhere near the 5000 SB cap * Patrolling cooldown was stuck for users, making them unable to patrol their submales * April Fools Mugshot decor removed lineart on lions * Stocking Branch via Organisation tab didn't work due to "not enough space in Branch" * Stoic personality lost 10% energy from a fight, rather than 7%, when the fight is automatically won with a Lucky Foot * August event... ... rewarding too many Dry Bones for Leopard encounter ... did not display DB/CB earnings ... only showed "+2 Small Meat Chunks" despite giving 3 * Typo on "Self-Absorbed (Evil)" personality RP message - "buttmumch", fixed to "buttmunch" * Red Bulls and Roasted Lambs were doubling energy for much longer than 8 hours * Viewing other users' kings displayed your own energy percentage (along with Red Bull status) * "Explore" breadcrumbs should read "Crossroads" * Inbox notifications displaying even when users do not have any new PMs * +0 SMR when using toys from a lion's page * Cubs/adolescents that were sent to the Giving Tree did not display on the father's "Sired Cubs" list * Incorrect Wiki link on tutorial * Footer links on mobile LD not clickable * Incorrect rewards being given out for the tutorial * Scrying Stone showing broken images * Energy Boosts usable while buried * Wardrobe issues concerning double linearts, glitching when moving marking slots, etc. have been fixed * Users being able to own multiple clans * Instant birthing actually contributes to your cub count now * "You Won A Raffle Prize!" PMs containing broken link * Raffle hosts not receiving item entries * Manually ending a raffle... ... did not award the host with SB ... did not generate a Game Notification with what the host earned ... did not display in SB or GB History if earned any currency ... no User Log entry was created * Using a Grain of Paradise or Buffalo Scrotum now distinguishes which one in User Log * Added "Inbox" breadcrumb to "Read Message" page Lag tweaks: * Hourly cron no longer purges all caches at once - this should help squashing full hour lag. Paypal issues: * A tweak was made to the Paypal script to try and prevent some of the issues a small handful of users were facing on receiving GB.

Smol things: 5 new frontpage rotating screenshots added (made by Elementalist) 17 new frontpage random NPC pictures added (June - July)

Shad has added new tags in Misc. and August categories! :D

Raffle Lioness

Congrats Bazial (#18031)! You have won the last raffle lady! New lady with the SImien Mountains BG and Quartz Inverted Zebra is up for impressing in Special Lioness area in Explore or in NEWS section under News Post List!

Polls and Dev Notes

Looks like 2100+ votes for new Felis Teen Female have made it clear that you guys want it for an art update. Now, Xylax cannot promise he can make it for next week's Friday because he twisted his arm ;'D We'll see! LINK - New poll! We have a lot of Reptile Roundup levels planned for future months/years but maybe you could help us pick which ones should be next?

[lioden-sim]

No Update for You! Wenet Claiming

This is not an update!

Okay Xylax what are you drinking Sooo... the coder who had no internet in past two weeks was screwed and had no internet today as well despite getting it installed. And this time I didn't have the info in advance as we all thought the internet would be fine today for an update u.u we were waiting in hopes a guy would fix it but he could not fix it, at least not in time. So what we're doing is posting special news today and... Art Update tomorrow, so I have SOME time to produce content for you guys. That means April 29th evening Lioden time you guys are getting Saturday Art Update. We apologize for the situation and with me slowly melting with my graphic tablet into one being by now, next 4 updates after this are meant to be coding updates to make up for the swaps (however there will be a lot of art content in some so don't worry!). We also apologize for downtime today - Unfortunately the servers were being physically moved to a new location by our web host, which is out of our control. As we were not given advance notice by the hosting company , we apologise for the lack of notice on Lioden. The downtime might reoccur in next 3 days as they keep being vague about the schedules Oh also, we're gonna do new poll tomorrow instead of today, but Raffle Lioness happens today as always! Bug fix though I received information that retiring is still not resetting Spring Usage ;0; oh no!! Since we had like an hour with proper internet, the coder managed to squeeze in a fix to do that. If you retired in past two days and didn't use Spring yet on new king, but are unable to drink, please modbox it or PM #4 Xylax - he will check userlogs and manually help you Why am I writing about myself in third person? Maybe I am drinking too much pepsi..

CLAIMING WENET!

OH MY GOSH so you CAN Claim Wenet? As promised, at the end of the month, she is claimable.

You will see Wenet change her mind on Sunday, last day of April:

- You have only 1 attempt at claiming her. If you fail, you won't be able to claim her this year anymore. - If it's any help - her personality is in Kind spectrum! (she does NOT keep the pose) - You can use 2 GB or leopard orchid to auto-claim her. It's only fair considering most of you guys have no boost with Kind personality ;'D - You... you can slap and battle her. But why? - She will hang around in same place for the rest of the day though so you can finish your daily quest! - She is claimable ONLY on Sunday April 30th, but if you miss it due to real life stuff, I am sure a lot of Wenets will appear in the marketplace for sale from other users :o - You need to finish Storyline in order to be able to claim her

Remember that the event ends on April 30th at 11:59 pm, and all your currency will be stored in your account until next year. May event will start automatically at May 1st 00:00 and appropriate News Post will appear a short bit before that.

There are new avatar Tags made by Shad, for April and Misc, check them out as always!

Raffle Lioness

Congrats Anuari (#86197)! You have won the last raffle lady! New lady with the Simien Mountains BG is up for impressing in Special Lioness area in Explore or in NEWS section under News Post List! ;D She has a new Feline 8 Silky!

[fluffland]

Pack (Part 1)

*Please note: tumblr is having issues so this needs to be broken into two parts. If you are a member of Wolvden, you can view this (unbroken) on the contest thread associated with it.*

Perhaps we shouldn’t have kept the pup. In the darkest of my thoughts, my common sense still hunts my doubts but never catches them, never gives me an answer. Surely, likely, you’d have done no different?

Dulca wanted a litter, but even after several winters of secret dances, we were left with no one but ourselves. It is lonely for the lone wolf, yes, but perhaps even moreso for the one who feels alone, even when another runs with them. Any warm thing we took down with our teeth to add to our own small warmth did not fill that ache. That want? Perhaps you know it? A family, a home, we were only trying to make one. When we found the pup, it was late into our second lone year. We were doing as always when hungry and listening for hares before dawn, in that time when the cold bites at you and burns. The world seemed frozen and dead, until Dulca swiveled her ears back, her nose moving. “Alvi, do you hear that?” I shook myself, and inched closer. Our shoulders met, my tawny to her silver and black. She was larger than I, but our sides still felt good together. “I- What is it, I don’t-“ “Something...crying?” I moved into the moonlight, sniffing. The frigid air left the inside of my nose numb to the skull. Confused, I turned to offer question with my tail, but she shot away into the shadows, and I was left to trail her lingering scent. When I caught up, she was licking a small, fuzzy, something. It looked up at me, and I shrank back. Its eyes glowed, not with the dark-light of the animals I knew, but like twin moons. Yet it seemed real enough, whimpering and keening until Dulca licked it with more ferocity and hit it with her nose to calm it. The small thing then looked at her, and at me. It growled and pinned its ears as it crawled closer to her. I wasn’t sure it liked me. Hell, I wasn’t sure I liked it. Was it a puppy? It certainly was oddly-shaped and very large to be so young. Yet it had the proper ears and tail, claws as well. And it held hints of the right smell beneath something metallic. I could, perhaps, see what Dulca saw in it. “Alvi, what do you think of this pup?” I thought we should eat it. But if I told her such, she would likely eat me. “It’s a bit...a bit different?” I swished my tail gently. This was a pup? I walked up to sniff it. The pup-that-wasn’t growled at me again. “Give her some space!” Dulca said, baring her teeth, then licking the furry thing gently. I suddenly had several questions. But I knew none of them would change matters when a wolf is protecting her pup. And that is what she now was, I guess. “Our” pup. Dulca named her Koll, but in my mind, for the longest time, she was Notawolf. Still, we were now a pack. Koll did not know how to hunt or speak as we did. But she did make small noises that tugged at something inside Dulca. I could not tell her to leave this child where we found it. I doubt she would have listened anyway. Winter chased and leapt for spring, and Koll grew. She learned to run as well as we, and how to hunt. Her mottled fur gained silvery banding and her tail lost its scrubbiness, flashing long and soft behind her. Dulca seemed proud of our pup. Koll was not like us, not completely, but she was ours, and even I saw she had skill. As the dark gave way to only light, our family raced across the tundra, and my mate did not mourn that summer. Koll started to teach us things as well. Her front limbs ended in paws more mobile than ours. Paws that reminded me of the tall stalkers whose dens we often avoided. When she started to use her claws to scratch things into the mud and show us, I was frightened. But Dulca seemed intrigued, and tried the scratchings herself, though hers were more crude. Koll seemed to love them anyway, and squeaked at her, then licked us both, even if I only watched.

*please continue to part 2*